Don’t you love memes for writers? I collect those cute, quirky,
fun-to-share graphics that bundle a nugget of truth inside a lump of laughter.
And not that long ago, I coined my own meme-worthy quote, “There’s more to
writing a book than writing a book.” As soon as I blurted that phrase in the
midst of a book marketing class I was teaching, I had to literally stop and
Google it to see if it was original. No exact-match results displayed, so I
later created a graphic, plastered my quote onto it, put my name as the author,
and blasted it all over my social media profiles.
The truth inside my meme isn’t exactly hidden. There IS more to
writing a book than writing a book. Much more.
Before an author types “The End” on the final page, he or she has
hopefully begun working on the other part of writing—marketing. Many authors
are surprised to learn that most books sell less than 200 copies, and sometimes
half of those are purchased by the author. When you consider that statistic is
derived from an average that includes best-selling authors, then the outlook
for the rest of us appears, well … dismal.
In my book-marketing class, the very next slide displays hope. The
reason most releases don’t break the 200-book sales barrier is lack of
marketing. So, in order to beat the odds, one has to put in the necessary
legwork to get the word out about new books. Then, I share the secrets the
best-sellers use.
Publishing a pic of your book cover on Facebook and sending a few
Tweets won’t cut it. The best thing an author can do to prepare for marketing
his or her book is to begin building (and nurturing) an email list of people
who have requested to hear from you because they are interested in you and your
writing.
As Shannon mentioned on a recent blog post here, we recently
launched a new small publishing company of clean/Christian fiction. One of our
goals is to help authors develop their platforms, primarily their email lists,
in order to ease the frustration when they discover there is much more to
writing a book than writing a book.
There are many ways to build an author email list. I’ve had good
success with Facebook contests. People love a chance to win, and readers love
the chance to win free books. Get with some friends and do a group contest so
participants can have a chance to win lots of books. Then each participant can
promote the contest. Make sure the entrants understand they will be subscribed
to all the author email lists by entering. You can manage such a contest by
using a contest app or by keeping up with everything manually.
It is my hope to train beginning and intermediate authors so
they’ll feel less stressed about the book-marketing end of the business and
focus on writing great books.
Before an author types “The End” on the final page, he or she has
hopefully begun working on the other part of writing—marketing. via @lindafulkerson #SeriouslyWrite
~~~~~~
Linda Fulkerson
became interested in writing while working as a copyeditor and typesetter at a
small-town weekly newspaper. She has since been published in several magazines
and newspapers, including a two-year stint as a sportswriter before working her
way up to online editor for a mid-sized daily. Linda is the author of two
novels and seven non-fiction books, four of which are coloring books for
writers. She recently purchased the bulk of Mantle Rock Publishing’s backlist and
acquired all of MRP’s future contracts. She, along with her business partner
Shannon Vannatter, launched Scrivenings Press LLC on July 1, 2020.